


Ones and Zeros

by chaineddove



Category: GetBackers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-05
Updated: 2006-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 02:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaineddove/pseuds/chaineddove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His was a world born of illusions, so he welcomed things that seemed too harsh or painful to be anything but reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ones and Zeros

Makubex dreamed sometimes, and he tried to tell himself that was a tangible proof of his reality. Except the blurry images which had been peaceful in his childhood were stranger now, stranger than the nighttime hours he had spent underwater swimming alongside dolphins with intelligent eyes. Now the water seemed to flow through him, and in the refracted light he could swear he saw ones and zeros, zeros and ones, a constantly shifting pattern which he could not decipher because it was flying through him too fast. He woke from those dreams coughing and looking for his breath, and Sakura wasn’t always there to pull him close and give him the illusion of family, even for a little while, and he never let the others see him that way at all. And there were the other dreams, since he had begun his half-mad project — he knew it was at least half-mad, but paradoxically, as long as he realized he was on the brink of madness or maybe mad already, he couldn’t really be. In the new dreams, he soared through the sky, but only because he jumped, over and over, from the highest tower he could climb. The air against his face was like the water, entering with his breath, ones and zeros and probably not real, and he shattered into light fragments when he woke, breathing hard, tears on his cheeks. He didn’t know if the dreams made him more real or only proved that the God of the Limitless Fortress was a cruel one.

He didn’t dream of Ginji, though he wished he could, sometimes, when the isolation was crushing him. Something about him, about the way he had been, had been enough to keep that feeling at bay. Maybe it had been the warmth in his eyes, because under his gaze Makubex remembered feeling only peace, except when the peace had been replaced with a strange sort of longing he had not puzzled out in time for it to do him any good. But Ginji had held him, sometimes, when he didn’t even know he just needed a pair of warm arms to grip him tight, nearly enough to hurt but mostly just enough to keep him rooted in the moment. His mind had always flown faster than anyone’s, but those few moments when it had outpaced even him and he was just tired, Ginji had been there to keep him steady, with comfort and peace in his brown eyes.

But he didn’t dream about Ginji’s eyes or anything else to do with Ginji except his absence. His hatred for Ginji was nearly as deep as his love for him, that strangely difficult to quantify longing he had felt sometimes looking up at him. Ginji — friend, ruler, enigma. Traitor. He didn’t dream, but he did remember and wonder, sometimes, what would have happened if things were just a little bit different, if he had been just a little bit quicker, if just once when he was being held in the warm cocoon of Ginji’s arms he could have brought himself just a little closer and explained that Raitei was everyone’s savior but he, Ginji, had been the one to save Makubex. But he hadn’t done it then, and now Ginji was out of his reach, just outside the Limitless Fortress in Shinjuku or on the moon, it didn’t matter. Either way, he was in a place Makubex would never go, and for that he hated him even more than for the shambles he had left behind in his wake when he had gone.

He wondered, had it been the program that had stopped him from speaking his heart then? He could feel its steady beat under his palm when he placed his hand on his chest, but there was only a certain level of reality there, too. Maybe he had no heart to speak, only ones and zeros, and maybe it had been cruelty from the God of the Limitless Fortress, or maybe it had been kindness, because while an illusion might love a human being, he didn’t think it could ever be the other way around. That was why he was so empty even while surrounded by all those who had gathered around him in search of infinity, that X factor they thought he could bring to them. Empty because these were people with families, homes, histories and names, and so they were not alike. So when Sakura’s lips brushed his forehead, those nights she was there to see him wake from his dreams, the touches seemed cool and unreal, because she was Kakei Sakura, a name given by her father and her mother, and he was Makubex, who had no name at all, and maybe no forehead to feel her lips press against, either.

When he had been small, going out on the balcony would net him the sight of a sliver of sky sprinkled with stars. Six hundred and fifty three stars that he could count, and taking into account what a small sliver of sky it was… He had tried calculating how many there must be before he knew better, but the numbers kept varying because every night when he looked he thought he could see new stars he hadn’t seen before and once the brightest one had disappeared and never returned, just like Ginji had gone and never returned. He kept himself underground, now, where there was no starry sky, though Sakura liked that illusion so he gave it to her sometimes.

His was a world born of illusions, so he welcomed things that seemed too harsh or painful to be anything but reality. Once while watching Sakura spinning in a shower of stars he had made for her, Makubex tried counting the false stars, though the program was his and therefore he knew exactly how many there would be before he even began. When Kagami approached him with nearly silent steps from behind, Makubex stopped his counting — one thousand and thirteen — and turned to the mysterious man he kept in his inner circle only because of the old adage about keeping one’s enemies closer than friends. The man from Babylon City smiled softly at him and commented, “The stars are so hard to see here, in the city. Even from the top of the highest tower of the Limitless Fortress, the city lights dim them, don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Makubex said with no hint of the anger he felt. Kagami knew everything and Makubex knew exactly enough to understand that he could hate and fear him all he liked, but he needed to keep him anyway. “The real sky is different, in any case.” Sakura laughed as he made a star fall into her hands, illuminating her face before exploding in a harmless shower of sparks. Makubex wondered if she were really as simple as she seemed, if anything she could touch was truly real to her, just like that. He loved Sakura for that simplicity, but he hated that she didn’t understand.

Kagami looked up. “It’s a beautiful reproduction, actually. Better than the real sky is, usually.”

“That’s not possible,” Makubex said shortly, and flipped the switch to turn the VR off and leave them in the pale blue light of multiple computer screens. In the half darkness, Sakura looked at him inquisitively, the smile bleeding off her face when she saw his eyes. Before he could offer an apology, she walked towards him, ran her hand lightly over the bandanna covering his hair, and walked out of the room.

“Now see what you’ve done; making a beautiful girl cry.”

“She wouldn’t cry over that,” Makubex said quietly. “It isn’t real, anyway.”

“You like torturing yourself, don’t you, Makubex?” Kagami asked with a smile sweet enough to be cruel.

“I like facts,” Makubex replied.

“You like thinking someone could just flip your switch and make everything go away,” Kagami purred. “You wish someone would.”

“I want to know, is all.” He hadn’t told Kagami what his ultimate goal was, but of course he knew. Makubex had never expected it to be otherwise. It would only be a matter of time before he would turn on them, too, though his calculations suggested that time had not yet come.

Lightning quick, Kagami’s hand was in his hair, yanking back nearly hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. But Makubex was calm, looking up and waiting for the punch line, because of course there would be one, though just like one of Emishi’s it probably wouldn’t be funny. “I’m sorry, does it hurt?” Kagami asked sweetly.

“You aren’t,” Makubex told him. “Sorry.”

“Of course not. After all, it may not be real. I’m from the upper floors, so I could do anything I liked to you, couldn’t I? Especially if it isn’t real.” His eyes glittered in the darkness with something like cruelty, or possibly madness, though maybe that was just a reflection of Makubex’s own eyes; he wasn’t sure.

“Probably. I could stop you.” He felt surprisingly calm, even when Kagami yanked him up by the hair until Makubex was barely balancing on his toes and they were practically eye to eye.

“And are you going to?” Kagami’s voice was at odds with his eyes, sweet and not at all threatening. But his eyes looked as though he expected Makubex to try to free himself and intended to enjoy bending him to his will.

Because Kagami seemed to want him to move, he didn’t. “No,” he said, and he would have shrugged his shoulders if he could, but as it was, he felt any extraneous movement might separate a good chunk of hair from his scalp. Behind his eyelids when he finally let them cover his eyes he saw only the shifting pattern of ones and zeros, translated into something he might not have wanted but welcomed anyway because his mind was running ahead of him again, so he needed someone to hold him hard enough to hurt and keep him grounded, and Ginji with his brown eyes and his promise of peace wasn’t there.

Afterwards when he lay in bed, his body heavy and hurting, he wondered if that had been the program too, if he had made the choice or someone else, and whether or not it mattered, in the end. The bone-deep weariness had settled in him so completely that he hadn’t even moved when Kagami left his side, just stayed sprawled as he was until Sakura came and covered him with a blanket later and he pretended to be asleep. He felt like crying, though he knew he shouldn’t, because nothing of substance had really changed and illusions didn’t cry.

He thought of Ginji then, too, wondered what it would be like when he came back as he knew he must, but when he slept he dreamed again of falling, only this time as he looked up Kagami was at the top of the tower, eyes glittering as he pushed him off the edge. “Go and see,” dream Kagami said, before dissolving into diamond shards and laughter.

He woke from the dream of falling as he always did, gasping and crying, after all, and Sakura was there to smooth the tears from his cheeks. “It’s just a dream,” she said. “It isn’t real.”

He closed his eyes and buried his face in her hair, which smelled comfortingly of her namesake flowers. “Nothing is,” he whispered, but she didn’t hear him or pretended not to, only gripping him tightly. He thought she was crying too, but he wasn’t sure.


End file.
